


i said i'd give my life for just one kiss

by Duckyboos



Series: Profound Meetings [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Storm Chasers, M/M, Minor Balthazar/Castiel (Supernatural), Storm Chaser Dean Winchester, Storm Chasing, Twister AU, Weatherman Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckyboos/pseuds/Duckyboos
Summary: “You’re nervous about seeing him aren’t you?”Castiel’s tempted to gesture to the sky in an unkind manner; they’re slap bang in the middle of Tornado Alley after all, and he has less-than-fond memories of Topeka and the EF4 that got him and his ex so caked in mud that it had taken them a two-hour-long shower to scrape off.Well, maybe not thefulltwo hours.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Profound Meetings [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820488
Comments: 48
Kudos: 148





	i said i'd give my life for just one kiss

**Author's Note:**

> So alright, I might be cheating a little bit here? Not only have I made this one twice the length of my originally stated goal, I've also not written their very first meeting. BUT they are meeting for the first time in three years, so that's gotta count for something, right??? Semantics, yeah?
> 
> Obviously based on the Twister movie!

The static on the radio is in congruence with the static in the air. 

There’s an ominous low rumbling in the too-close-for-comfort-distance and then the sky is cracking open with purple veins of electricity, forking their way to earth and boiling the sap inside trees, spontaneous combustion all over the plains of middle America. 

It’s magnificent is what it is, and at one time - not even that long ago - Castiel lived for this. Was alive because of this. 

But that time has gone and his life is what it is now. 

There’ll be a hailstorm any second now and he leans forward over the steering wheel of his decidedly-not-a-1967-Impala, to look up and out of the windshield. Above him, there’s nothing but cumulonimbus clouds as far as the eye can see, a threatening black and purple like a fresh bruise.

There’s a nagging sense of inevitability and foreboding that’s not explained away by the supercell forming above them.

Next to him in the passenger seat, Castiel’s fiancé, Balthazar, gently touches Castiel’s thigh in what is probably supposed to be a comforting gesture, but it does nothing to soothe the growing unease settling in the pit of Castiel’s stomach like a leaden weight.

“You’re nervous about seeing him aren’t you?”

Castiel’s tempted to gesture to the sky in an unkind manner; they’re slap bang in the middle of Tornado Alley after all, and he has less-than-fond memories of Topeka and the EF4 that got him and his ex so caked in mud that it had taken them a two-hour-long shower to scrape off.

Well, maybe not the _full_ two hours. 

But, Balthazar isn’t wrong. Castiel _is_ nervous about seeing Dean again.

“I’m fine,” Castiel replies, a little more harshly than intended. He tries again, attempting to dredge up some cheer that he doesn’t really feel. “I’ll just be glad to get out of the path of this storm.”

The hand on his thigh squeezes tighter, bleeding heat through his pants. Castiel swallows hard against the urge to move his leg away.

“I thought you’d be into all this shit,” Balthazar mutters, turning to look out of the window. “Being the Midwest’s premier weatherman and all.”

Castiel inwardly cringes. He’d thought that by becoming a weatherman he could help people; something he’d failed at as a storm chaser.

It was so much more than chasing storms to him though. Having studied meteorology at undergrad, then atmospheric physics at postgrad and PhD level, Castiel’s lifelong ambition was a childhood fascination, turned obsession, turned addiction that had to be quit cold turkey in order to be able to breathe without feeling a crushing, all-consuming weight on his soul.

Now, of course, he knows that it’s the most alive that he’s ever felt. He’s helping nobody as a weatherman.

There’s a mud-encrusted dark SUV haphazardly parked near the entrance of the field that Castiel carefully pulls into. Nearby, there are stationary trucks that he recognizes with a pang of longing in his heart.

“You think he’s signed the papers?” Balthazar asks, his usually handsome face creased into a disapproving frown.

Castiel doesn’t want to think too hard about why he hopes that Dean hasn’t. He simply shrugs vaguely, unbuckles his seatbelt, and slides gracelessly out of the door he opens.

Straight into a massive sludge of mud. 

These pants aren’t his best pair, but still. 

Through the window, as he rounds the front of the vehicle, he tells Balthazar to wait inside. It wouldn't do for him to ruin his clothes as well. Vintage Versace or some such shit. 

The door to one of the trucks emblazoned with: 'The Winchester Bros: Saving People, Chasing Storms' is open and blaring obnoxious hair metal. Castiel recognizes the tune as one that Dean used to hum when he was particularly anxious.

Though he’d never admit it aloud, it’s become a guilty pleasure of Castiel’s in the last three years. 

He makes his way over to the truck, treading carefully to avoid the worst of the mud, but realistically, it’s no use. His pants and shoes are ruined and he longs for the day of ten-dollar pairs of jeans and boots that could withstand churned up knee-high mud.

The music cuts out just as Castiel reaches the open door and the abrupt silence is jarring, wrong, _alien_. Dean’s always surrounded by noise - chatter, music, the steady beeping of equipment, the screeching winds of a tornado. 

“Damn,” Castiel mutters, steeling himself for the meeting that’s been three years in the making. 

Just as he’s taking a deep breath, ready to ascend the three steep steps into the truck, palm clammy on the handrail, he hears the familiar stomping of improperly laced army boots on the hollow floor, and then he’s looking up into the face of someone so beautiful that it’s always taken his breath away.

Dean’s eyes are the color of the grass in an orchard in central Washington and Castiel will never get over it. Nor will he ever get over the full plush pink of his mouth, nor the constellation of freckles across his nose. 

Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Cas?” 

That rough, road dirt voice, that ‘I haven’t slept for weeks’ hair. Castiel needs to slap himself before Balthazar puts in an appearance and does it for him.

“Uh, yeah.” Castiel clears his throat, tries to act like Dean doesn’t affect him.

Dean’s amused expression lets Castiel know that he’s failed miserably. 

Attempting to scramble enough brain cells together in order to say what he needs to say so that he can leave again, Castiel manages, “Um, have you… I’m here to -- have you signed the papers?”

For a long moment, Dean just stares down at him from his position at the top of the stairs. Castiel is still frozen at the bottom, hand on the rail.

“Papers?” Dean finally says, small inflection at the end signaling that it is indeed a question and not a confirmation. 

“Yeah,” Castiel confirms, confidence growing. He steps back to allow Dean space to descend the stairs. An image of the two of them in Topeka skitters across his brain before he can grab ahold of it and banish it for good. “Err, I had my lawyer send them over to you. You promised in the email that you’d sign them and get them back to me. That was two months ago.”

A flash of something that Castiel isn’t quick enough to identify, followed by recognition, lights up Dean’s already unbearably handsome features. “Oh, shit yeah man! Sorry, I got the papers the same day, but we were tracking a supercell near Des Moines that turned into an EF3, so it kinda fell by the wayside.”

Castiel feels a familiar sense of fond exasperation expanding his lungs. Dean steps down into the mud, heedless of the stick-suck of the earth. His jeans have a hole in the knee and the t-shirt that proudly proclaims “Head in the Cumulus” across the broad expanse of his chest has dark patches in the armpits. 

It’s endearing and terrifyingly familiar all at once, and Castiel is hit with the desire to hug the man who had been a part of his life for the better part of a decade.

Instead, Castiel simply trudges after him, like always. Dean’s talking about updrafts and the morphology of supercells, but Castiel isn’t paying attention to anything other than the way Dean’s ass moves in his worn jeans. 

Which may explain why Castiel is at a complete loss when Dean stops by Castiel’s own SUV with an expectant look on his face.

“Huh?” He says intelligently. 

Balthazar is staring curiously at them from his high-up perch inside the car.

Dean gives Castiel a look that he would have been able to decipher two and a half years ago, but now leaves him feeling confused and more than a little bereft, reaching for something just outside of his grasp. 

“I said…” Dean starts with fastidious patience, “It alright if we borrow your suped up SUV? My dad’s old junker is fucked and according to Sam there’s a hell of a tornado about to touchdown about a quarter of a mile Southeast of here.”

“More like Southwest and half a mile,” Castiel corrects on autopilot.

Dean beams at him like Castiel’s just passed a test that he didn’t even know he was taking.

“What?” Castiel says far too quietly, belying his growing annoyance. “And no. You’re not ‘borrowing’ my SUV, Dean.” He does the air quotes and everything, but Dean doesn’t see them, too busy poking and prodding at the car, kicking the tires.

“Awh come on, Cas.” Dean wheedles eventually when Castiel’s words finally sink in. He straightens up and faces him straight on, turning all of that charm and charisma on him. “What happened to ‘what’s yours is mine, and mine is yours?’”

This cannot actually be happening.

“We broke up Dean, that’s what happened. We’re getting a divorce.”

There. He’s finally said it.

Dean makes an incorrect answer buzzer sound and reaches into his back pocket to pull out a folded piece of paper. Even before he unfolds the dogeared document, Castiel knows what it’s going to be. Even the sticky arrows are still in place, luminous green pointing to the surreptitiously empty space where Dean’s signature should be.

Goddammit.

“Not yet, we’re not.” 

Castiel has to squint to see, but there are tiny pinpricks of pen half an inch above the dotted line. Hesitation marks. 

“Dean,” Castiel tries to start reasonably, even though it feels like they’re breaking up all over again.

“Cas.” Dean grins, but Castiel can see the tiredness and the hurt behind it now that he’s looking. 

Castiel sighs, gives in. Like always. “What do you need my truck for?”

“Glad you asked.” Dean quickly refolds Castiel’s ticket to freedom and replaces it in his left ass pocket. Not that Castiel is watching of course. “We want to prove through the use of rapid-scan mobile observations that the traditionally regarded hypothesis of tornadogenesis is wrong.”

Castiel blinks at him, disbelief and excitement warring inside him. “You built her? She works?” 

Dean nods, enthusiasm making his eyes appear even greener. “Yeah, man. That’s why I wanted to get you out here.”

Castiel can feel the burn of tears at the backs of his eyes. This isn’t why he came here today, but now he’s thankful he did. 

Castiel was a sophomore at college when he met Dean. His car had crapped out on him and Dean had chatted to him as he fixed it, talking generally about hobbies, one of which was storm chasing - the _real_ family business he’d called it. As a meteorology student, Castiel had been fascinated. And attracted. And almost instantaneously in love with the beautiful, vibrant 19-year-old that was endearingly unaware of both his own attractiveness and intelligence; able to build and fix complex engines without breaking a sweat.

A year or so into their relationship they’d lain awake one night discussing how to create a rapid-scanning mobile Doppler radar in order to properly catalog individual tornado vortex signatures with the aim of finding out more in order to improve warning times. Dean’s mom had been killed by an EF5 in front of Dean and his brother Sam when they were just four years and six months old respectively. Their dad had sort of lost the plot and had decided to take up his obsessive campaign against tornadoes until he’d died when Dean was twenty-three. 

The first incarnation of ‘Dorothy’ as they’d named the machine that Dean had spent over six months engineering, failed miserably, didn’t even get off the ground as they incorrectly placed it in the tailwind, downward draft, meaning that it was destroyed instantly.

The second incarnation is what ended up with Dean and Castiel caked in mud, with nothing to show for it. They broke up three months later. 

“Have you thought about putting a roll cage on this?”

“It was one of the added extras offered by the dealership that I turned down,” Castiel smarts, reflexively. “Obviously, I haven’t. There’s not much of a need for roll cages in Salt Lake City.”

Dean just grins that infuriating, beautiful grin that had Castiel lost from the moment they laid eyes on each other. He already knows that he's hooked Castiel, but just for good measure he says, “Come on Cas, it’ll be just like the old days.”

And if that isn’t _precisely_ what Castiel is afraid of. 


End file.
